


Threatening to Bloom

by elle_stone



Series: Always the Girl with the Plan [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Past Finn Collins/Raven Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 03:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Raven watches him. She watches the grip of his fingers around his fork and she takes in the curl of his hair and then she remembers, last night, brushing her teeth in his bathroom and afterwards jumping right over him into bed, sliding herself into the thin space between his body and the wall and breathing her mint toothpaste breath against his mouth.And now, she thinks, he's sitting across from her wondering what a few moments of domesticity mean, what it means that he's run his fingertips down along her spine, what it means that she's pressed her feet against his feet and her hips against his hips and whispered good night in his ear like what she really means is something like I love being with you—Or: On the first day of spring break, Raven and Bellamy run into a figure from the past.A sequel to Always the Girl with the Plan.





	Threatening to Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> This sequel to the very first The 100 fic I ever wrote (!!) was requested by anonymous on tumblr....all the way back in October, but I'm a slow writer, so here it finally is. 
> 
> Anon requested an update to the fic "with maybe them a year later or them running into Finn." Because Bellamy is a senior in the original story, setting this one a year in the future would put it after his graduation date, and that seemed too complicated. So this is set a few months after _Always the Girl_ instead. 
> 
> While it would be helpful to read that story first, it's probably not strictly necessary.

A second ago, asleep. Now she is awake and blinking up at the full moon through the window. Silver light pools in the valleys of the blanket, illuminating the abstract shapes formed in the outlines of their limbs.  

She reaches her hand up toward the moon.  

Next to her, he stutters in his sleep, turns. Summits crumble and reform. A revision of the landscape. A tidal wave of dreams. 

The room is warm but her legs are bare so she pulls the blanket up to her chin, curls around a pillow, cuddles in. She waits to fall asleep again. 

And when sleep won't come she turns over again and wraps herself around him, smaller body around larger body, and listens to the rhythm of his lungs and feels the beat-beat of his heart under her palm, his skin soft and warm like humans are warm, until at last she is carried away, sent away floating on the laziest of rivers on the clearest day of spring. 

* 

A second ago, asleep. Now she is awake but her dreams still claw at her. There is a loud, persistent beeping from the other side of the room and the pale beauty of the moon has been replaced by the sharp upright angle of the sun. 

Raven buries her face in her pillow and groans. The beeping does not stop but by now she recognizes it as an alarm, not her usual melody of wind chimes but a harsh blare of sound, and whatever its source, she won't be able to reach it without getting to her feet. She gives herself fifteen seconds more, then launches herself upright at last with another frustrated sigh. 

She is in Bellamy's room. There is his desk, where he’s stacked a precarious pile of notebooks and a couple stray paperbacks, along with a scattering of notecards covered in his block letter scrawl; and there is his bookcase next to it, where he keeps all of his textbooks within arm’s reach; and there’s his dresser drawer, with the dorky picture of him and his sister on top, next to some pocket detritus and toiletries. On the walls his posters of European vistas and old Roman monuments. There are her clothes on the floor and her jacket on the back of his chair. 

She’s a little shaken, something jarred out of place inside her, but it’s not because she’s found herself in Bellamy’s bed. She’s spent the night at the Ark Apartments before, slept all through the night with him and woken up to the full brightness of the sun shining on them from the window next to the bed. This is the first time, though, that she’s woken up here alone. And on top of that disorientation is something else, a feeling of something missing, a creeping feeling just there on the edge of her mind, nudging her, that she's forgotten something very important about today. 

But it's hard to think with that incessant beeping trying to drill a hole into her skull.  

She shoves aside the blankets and gets to her feet, then takes the few steps over to the desk and grabs up the digital clock from which the infernal noise emanates. A bit of poking, and she finds the off-switch underneath. Finally. Only then does she turn her attention to the sticky note on the top: 

_Set this alarm for 9 so you wouldn't oversleep. Feel free to ignore it (this is NOT me kicking you out!). Will be in the library all day. Meet up later? Happy spring break. B_

Right. Raven smiles, quiet and soft and to herself, and only because a feeling sweet as spring time, light as rays of morning sun, free as flying, is slowly melting through her. Spring break. How could she _ever_ forget spring break? 

The first day of a vacation, like all first days, is primarily a time of opportunity. A chance to wipe away the past, whatever that might be: everything that has been lost or left undone or passed over, everything done wrong. It is a beginning: the slightest of commas, an intake of breath, and on the exhale all the power in the world to start again. 

She grabs her clothes off the floor and starts to get dressed, but instead of her old t-shirt from yesterday, she pulls one of Bellamy's from his dresser. It's a bit too big and hangs off her shoulder in a weird way but it's clean and she likes to think that he won't mind. Then she reaches for her jacket, pauses, and jumps back up on her knees on the bed instead. Unlocks his window and pushes it open, creaky and reluctant and shuddering in its frame, just enough to get a feel for the air. 

Crisp and cool with early spring, underlined with the tinge of winter chill like melting ice and still-bare trees, smelling of deep dark soil and puddles.  

She decides just to tie her jacket around her waist. 

And she considers tossing the sticky note in the trash but—it made her smile. So she folds it in two and stows it away in her pocket instead. 

Settled, then, she bounds downstairs and to the kitchen, where she finds Miller sitting surrounded by a mess of books and papers that all but obscures the island countertop beneath. He only flicks his eyes away from his laptop screen for a moment to acknowledge her as she comes in.  

"Back again, Reyes?" 

"Here to make your day brighter," she answers, with a cheeriness that surprises even herself. She presses the heels of her palms against the countertop for leverage, idly lifts her feet up off the floor and then back down. Beneath her wrist is a shoddily copied article on martial themes in Shakespeare's plays. She tilts her head, trying to read it, not because it truly interests her but because she's long had the habit of reading anything that comes into her line of sight, and huffs when Miller notices and pulls the sheaf of papers out from under her arm with a jerk. 

"Do you mind?" he asks. "I'm trying to work." 

"Didn't realize I was such a disruption," Raven quips, rolling her eyes, then shifts her weight back a half-step and crosses her arms. "You do realize it's nine in the morning on the first day of spring break, right?" 

Miller's already returned his attention to his computer screen, which is where, she's sure, it will stay until she finally leaves him alone. Not that she's insulted. She's spent enough time at Bellamy's apartment the last few weeks to have learned a bit about his roommates, and Miller, she knows, is surly but harmless, and puts on a show of annoyance much more convincing than the feeling underneath. "It's called a senior thesis," he answers. His voice sounds far-off, like it’s coming from the same far distance as his attention. “Look it up." 

"Will do." She gives a slow, sage nod of the head, lets the movement ripple through her torso as she works out her restlessness. "I've never heard of one of those. So," she stretches up on her toes, trying to look over Miller's shoulder at the countertop beyond. "What's the coffee situation in this den of studiousness?" 

Miller holds up a large mug of midnight-black liquid, in the process knocking over the slim volume of unannotated _Hamlet_ it was propping up, and gestures behind him with his head. "Help yourself. Bellamy made a pot when he got up." 

Now that Raven takes a closer look at the counter, she sees at least three different versions of _Hamlet_ scattered across it. She'd worry for Miller's sanity, but at this point, it's probably too late. So she just says, "Thanks," and slides between his stool and the fridge on her way to the cabinets. 

"Speaking of your boyfriend," Miller adds, a few moments later, almost startling her out of her skin as she adds a spoonful of sugar to Bellamy's Historians Do It for Old Times' Sake mug. Raven shoots him a glare over her shoulder that he probably doesn't even see. 

"He's not my boyfriend," she corrects, as Miller continues: 

"Is that his shirt you're wearing?" 

He does not seem chastised, doesn't even glance in her direction as she takes her coffee and sits down on the stool across from him. He's still typing away slowly at what looks to be a lengthy outline, which sits side by side on his screen with a considerably less lengthy document of prose. 

"It is Bellamy's shirt," she concedes. The coffee has long gone cold, but she takes a long swallow anyway, desperate for her morning caffeine boost. She tries to read the expression on Miller's face; as far as she can tell, it's eighty percent confounded by the great works of the Bard, twenty percent amused, probably by her. 

"So... if you're stealing his clothes but you're not his girlfriend," Miller ponders, finally pulling his eyes from the screen to grab at a library-bound book to his left, "what will you do when you two kids finally do make things official?" 

Raven tips back her mug for another drink, then looks down into its depths and answers, "Harvest his organs, obviously." Her voice betrays nothing of the spider legs of uncertainty tip-toing up the back of her neck. Which is as it should be. She drains the rest of her coffee and then stands, adding, just as she passes behind Miller on her way to the sink, "Or the organs of his unsuspecting roommate." 

"I'll give Murphy a heads up when he gets back," Miller replies, without missing a beat. "Have you seen my pen?" He flips up the cover of one of his _Hamlet_ s, this one lying open to his left, then shuffles through a stack of paper to his right. "That will foil your evil plan." 

"My organ harvesting operation?" Raven asks. "Or does your pen have some nefarious ideas of its own?" The writing utensil in question is about an inch away from rolling of the island entirely. She grabs it up and hands it to him. "You're not very good at multi-tasking, are you?" 

"Stop distracting me and get out of my house," he scowls, as he takes back the pen, but she can see the hint of smile trying to break through the glower. 

Raven flashes him a bright grin, then turns on her heel, pony tail swaying behind her as she heads toward the front hall. "See you later," she calls over her shoulder. 

She's quite sure she's gotten the last word in, but just before she opens the door, Miller's voice booms out at her back: "I'm sure you will." 

Raven huffs out a breath, more amused than annoyed, and turns her gaze up so that she’s looking at the heavens as she takes her first step outside, breathes in the day’s first full breath of fresh air. “Smartass,” she mumbles, but hardly hears herself. Her mind is already running on ahead and she’s grinning. 

She skips down the two steps to the front walk, taking the last one at a jump, and feels the shiver of the changing of the seasons shaking down her spine. The spider legs are still there, too, tickling along the fine hairs of her neck. But they must compete now with the scent of the Earth broken up with spring, of new-shoot leaves and a gray sky threatening showers. They must compete with the free-floating sense of hope, weightless and free, that fills up her lungs with each intake of air. 

The spring-smell and the hope and the white-grey of the sky say it is going to be a good day. 

The spider legs ask: _why did you take his shirt, if he is not your boyfriend, or if you do not **want** him to be—?_

* 

The path from the Ark Apartments back to campus leads first downhill through a small scrap of woods, then dwindles down into the side street of a residential block, and finally empties out, like a stream into a river, into a main town thoroughfare, on the other side of which are the main campus gates. Raven jogs over the zebra crossing as if over a tenuous bridge and then slips in through the gate and comes to rest, finally, on the bit of grass between the library and the European languages building. Her legs ache for a good run. Once she gets back to her dorm, maybe, and changes clothes. A quick mile, to start her vacation off. 

She stretches her arms up and her torso back, feels every muscle, tests every tendon. When she opens her eyes, her view is of the endless sky and foregrounded against it, the library tower, dizzyingly tall and distant, arching up as she would like to arch up. The sight reminds her of the note still in her pocket.  

_Will be in the library all day._

She bends forward, then straightens again, shakes out her limbs. Takes out her phone and hesitates, but only for a moment. 

**How's the thesis going?**

Bellamy's reply pops up right away— _Is it too late to drop out of school?_ —and she grins. (She always smiles when he texts her or when he replies, when she thinks of him, when she is reminded of him. It's a good thing they have going, a good and easy thing.)  

**Maybe you should make that plan B.**

She sends the message, then lets her fingers hover over her screen, thinking, even as she watches the ellipses that signal Bellamy typing, somewhere in the library's depths. 

_It's a tempting alternative. What are you doing today?_

**Not sure yet. Want to meet up for dinner?**

_Yeah. 7?_

Raven replies in the affirmative but doesn't put away her phone. A tendril of hesitation, which she is not used to, unfurls in the back of her mind. She remembers the moment she caught sight of his face, just before she left his room on the first night they met, and recognizes in his expression then a mirror of this feeling in her now. 

She presses send on the message she’d typed without thinking. 

**Hey Bellamy. Thoughts on me borrowing your shirt for the day?**

_Ummm… Which shirt?_

She glances down. It's blue, which describes a good number of Bellamy's shirts, and baseball style, which she's always felt suits her well. But instead of telling him so in words she holds her phone out and takes a pic, and sends it off to him. 

A pause, the ellipses again, then: 

_You look better in it than I do._

And, a moment later: 

_Wait, are you outside the library right now?_

Raven shrugs down at her phone. She was right in her initial instinct, anyway—he doesn't mind. She's imagining him smiling as he types. Surrounded by his history books and his handwritten notes, at his favorite spot beneath the stained-glass window on the first floor. Smiling at his phone and the photo of her, imagining her. 

**Yes I am. You caught me.**

_You caught me_ , he answers, a response she doesn't understand, but before she can ask, he adds _Wear it tonight?_ and that lightheaded feeling, like wafting through the air, takes over her again, the one through which it is so unbearably difficult to think, but not in an unpleasant way, and she lets the last of her uncertainty go. 

**You bet.**

* 

They agree to meet outside Raven's dorm before dinner, since it's halfway between the library and the cafeteria, and when Bellamy says he’ll be in the library all day, he really means _all day_. The gray morning has slid by now into a gray dusk, and the temperature, precarious even at the height of the hazed over sun, has sunken just as surely as the light. Raven pulls her arms through her jacket sleeves. She's standing underneath the streetlight, watching for his silhouette in the distance. 

Just as the light flicks on, she catches sight of him, rounding the corner at the far end of the street. 

A sign, perhaps. Or just a moment of simple, poetic beauty. 

When he reaches her, he pulls her in for a one-armed hug and then a kiss, and it's hard to remember that she saw him last less than twenty-four hours ago. He looks tired, with the dragged-down look of too many hours spent alone and in the books, but he manages a smile when he asks about her day. She can hear in his voice the way that the evening air in his lungs and the movement of his legs as they walk and, maybe, her presence next to him, too, are starting to awaken him again. 

She knows the feeling. She knows what diving all in feels like, and the relief of finally returning to the surface to breathe. 

"Please say you're not going to spend the entire break in the library," she says, an abrupt left turn from her description of her morning run out to the lake. "And _don't_ talk to me about your thesis. I have work too, but don't you—" 

_Don't you feel like something really good is about to happen? Or is happening?_

"Don't you want to enjoy our time off?" 

"Enjoy our time off," Bellamy echoes, with a huff of amusement, too exhausted to sound mean. "What is this: Raven Reyes, going soft? I mean—yeah," he adds, dropping the fond teasing tone, shifting the weight of his backpack as they start across the short end of the quad, "I'd like to. But this thesis—" 

"Is going to get done and is going to be brilliant because you're smart." She looks up at him, stern, a gaze of steel. "And you've been working on it forever. And you love this ancient history stuff." 

Bellamy just shoots her a skeptical frown, then shakes his head and turns away with a frustrated sigh, like he's existing on a plane of stress and uncertainty beyond her ability to understand. Raven won't be undone. She grabs at his arm and tugs until he looks at her again, and all but stops them in their tracks as she asks him, seriously, "Would I lie? Would I give you generic encouragement if I thought you really had something to worry about?"  

The correct answer is _of course not_ but he doesn't want to admit it. She enjoys watching the stages of hesitation that play across his features, before they settle into a reluctant acceptance at last. "No. You wouldn't. But you really don't know that much about what I'm working on—" 

"Then explain it to me. Not tonight," she adds, quick, and flashes him a grin just as they cross the street. The cafeteria looms in the near distance ahead of them. "If you don't take the rest of the evening off, your brain is going to start leaking out of your ears." 

Bellamy scoffs. "There's an image. From the girl who once spent a whole weekend in the library basement working on a physics project." 

"I was on a roll. And hey—what did you do as soon I turned the damn thing in? Took me out on a hike. Got me out of my head." She links her arm through his. Her gaze is set steadfastly ahead of them, and her voice is light. The feeling beneath it is not. "I'm returning the favor." 

Bellamy grumbles something unintelligible in reply but pulls her a bit closer all the same.  

With more than half the student population away for spring break, the campus is noticeably quiet; there’s no one else in sight now, which is rare for this part of campus at this hour. As they approach the cafeteria steps, though, the door of the building opens and a single student slips outside. Raven notices him at first only by chance: a disturbance in the uncanny stillness. But when he looks up, she recognizes him, and falters for just a moment in her steps. 

Bellamy, of course, notices anyway. "You okay?" he asks, and she nods.  

"Fine. I'm fine. Just be cool, okay?" she mumbles back under her breath. The boy has noticed them now, and he raises his hand to wave at her as he comes down the steps. 

"When am I ever not cool?" Bellamy is asking, exaggerated insult to his voice, but Raven has no opportunity to answer. She stops them at the base of the steps just as the boy reaches the last one. They're standing almost face to face now, and he looks genuinely happy to see her. 

Her own smile feels tight. There's a nervous clenching in her stomach that she doesn't know how to explain. 

It gets worse when he says her name—"Raven!"—and steps forward with his arms half-lifted as if he were about to go in for a hug. Not as if he planned on a hug, precisely, but as if it were his instinct, muscle-memory a decade in the making, and so he just moves closer without thinking. 

She drops Bellamy's arm and returns the gesture, but to hold him feels like embracing a statue. It's the sort of hug she'd give a distant cousin at a family reunion. 

Is that all he is to her now? 

"Finn," she says as she draws back, and even though her arm is barely brushing against Bellamy's now, she can feel the way he stiffens at the name. "It's... been a while. I haven't seen you around much." She puts her hands in her pockets, then immediately takes them out again, not sure what to do with herself now that the gap between them has slid back into place. 

"Yeah," he nods. "Well—I've been around. I guess we just haven't run into each other." 

He only lives one dorm over from hers. But they don't take any classes together, and they only have a few friends in common anymore, and she spends a lot of time, now, over at Bellamy's place. 

When they were dating, they were always making time for each other. Prioritizing each other. Making conscious choices to keep up the pattern of closeness they'd held to since they were children but who broke that pattern first—? 

_Dinner with Clarke. She touched Finn's arm and he smiled, looked down, maybe embarrassed, looked back up and straight at her—_

"I guess not," Raven agrees. Her voice sounds faraway and thin, like it's traveling a distance of six months to reach them. Louder, with a confidence she hopes will break this spell, she puts her hand on Bellamy's arm and says, "I should introduce you. This is Bellamy. Bellamy, Finn. An old friend." 

It's not a lie but the words form sharp, as if her tongue were a knife, and she feels no remorse when the pleasant mask of Finn's expression falters. _What would you have me say_? she wants to ask him. She imagines herself, briefly, yelling the question at him, throwing it in his face, as they stand out in the spring dusk beneath the barely-blooming trees. _What should I say? Finn, an old boyfriend, an old love? Finn, who—_

As if it were a secret she wanted to lay bare. As if Bellamy didn't already know, and as if Finn could not read that knowledge in the hard grip of his hand when they exchange the usual nice-to-meet-you pleasantries. 

Bellamy lets go first and in the same movement reaches for Raven's hand instead. He slides his fingers between her fingers and curls them together; she can feel the heat of his palm against her palm. They have never held hands in public before. The gesture feels unexpectedly forceful and declarative, and all she can do is watch the way Finn's gaze darts down: how he takes in the simple motion as the assertion it is; how, after he notices, he no longer knows where to look. 

Is this a joke they're playing, Raven wonders, or a confession? 

"So," she says, quick, into a silence already drawn out too long, "how's Clarke?" 

"Clarke?" His brow furrows, and she loathes the confusion on his face.  

"Yeah, your—how's she doing?" 

She's just trying to be polite. She's just being _polite_ and Finn is scrambling for words and behind him, a group of three girls starts up the cafeteria steps, a reminder that the world moves on, though she feels trapped in amber like a specimen out on display.  

"She's fine," Finn answers, finally. "As far as I know—I don't see her all that often." 

"You don't?" Raven's honestly surprised and it shows. She'd assumed that he'd run off to Clarke the minute Raven handed him his necklace back. Floating through the emotional wreckage that followed, she'd pictured them a dozen times or more, fucking on a paint-splattered canvas, or worse: holding hands against a sunset, kissing on a blanket under the stars. Whatever romantic nonsense art-types do. 

And maybe they did. Maybe it just didn't work out. 

"I mean, sometimes." He shrugs. "We drifted apart at the end of last semester, though."  

She catches his gaze quick-flitting over her again: her hand in Bellamy's, the too-big shirt she's wearing, her face, her eyes. 

"Kind of like we did," he adds. He sounds wistful and it hurts. 

_A year ago, sitting together on her bed, holding hands, whispering promises and plans, how: “In four years, we’ll graduate, and we’ll move to California, and get jobs. And we will never, ever come back here, ever again.”_

"Well it happens," Raven says, clearing her throat. If she sounds hard it's because she is reminding herself to be hard, reminding herself of the risk of being vulnerable, or hopeful, or honest. Finn was her best friend once. She told him everything. All at once she's remembering his arms around her, late nights in his childhood bedroom when she didn't want to go home, and their first kiss, and also how last summer, when he was fooling around with another girl on the side, she'd call him up on Skype and his eyes would dart and flicker over her face.  

Her hand hurts from holding on to Bellamy's too tightly. 

She's about to say, _I'll see you around_ , or something just as tinny and hollow to the ear, when Finn takes in a deep breath, and on the exhale says, "Look." He's staring at her with an unnecessary intensity, like he's trying to pretend that they're alone, or like he wants her to pretend that they are. "I don't know what you thought, Raven, but I was never with her—" 

"You were, though," she cuts in, surprising herself with the sharp edge in her tone. 

It's enough. He hesitates, looks like he wants to take a step away from her, but doesn't. "We weren't in a relationship," he clarifies. "We didn't date. And I'm sorry about what happened. I know... that's not worth much. But I am." 

_You're fucking right it's not_ , a voice in her head snarls. But there's another, too, and it's calm and even and saying, _I know._ _I know. I know._

 She’s not sure which one to listen to, so she just says, “Thanks.” 

**_Thanks_**. What a fucking stupid thing to say. 

Finn clears his throat, opens his mouth like he might say something more, and closes it again. He's staring at her still and then, abruptly, he's looking only at the ground. Out of the corner of her eye, Raven can see Bellamy adjusting the strap of his backpack with his free hand, shifting the weight of his books as the moment shifts, an uncertain quicksand underneath them. The pause seems to stretch out much longer than it does. 

"Maybe we could hang out again, sometime," Finn says. Raven wonders if he was counting out the seconds in his head, if there's some special ex-boyfriend etiquette he's following: _wait five agonizing beats after an apology, then try to reconnect_. How stupid; how calculating. How very much not like Finn at all. 

She's sorry for the thought as she thinks it. 

And then, in the wake of it, she is just sad. 

"Maybe," she answers. The word could be a polite lie or a tentative truth, a hint that they should part without looking back, or a careful step onto the shaky ladder of trusting him again. Even she’s not sure. The campus is small, and they still have some friends in common. And they were as close as family, for such a long time. 

But there's an abyss between them, too. 

"Are you staying on campus over break?" she adds. The words sound rushed, an attempt to fill the gap in their stilted conversation: like a line in a script, almost forgotten, stuttered over as the audience watches and waits. 

"No," Finn admits. "I had to stay an extra day for this work thing… I'm leaving tomorrow morning." 

"Oh." She feels an unexpectedly sharp sensation of relief. "Well—maybe we'll meet up after." 

"Yeah. I'd like that." He takes a half-step back, the beginning of a turn away from them. "I'll see you, Raven." Then he glances over at Bellamy, nods his head. "Nice meeting you, Bellamy." 

"Mmm, you too," Bellamy answers. His voice is gruff and his words quick. Raven does not look at him again until, with his hand raised in a final wave goodbye, Finn heads off on the path leading to the center of campus, the outline of him quickly swallowed by the rising dusk.  

She watches the spot where Finn was standing for a long moment, then sighs, and tugs on Bellamy's hand to lead him up the steps. "Come on," she huffs, "don't just stand around." 

"Yes, ma'am," he answers, with exaggerated insolence. 

Once inside, they separate: Bellamy to grab an omelette and Raven to look at the salad bar, because there aren't a lot of options for on-campus eating during break. Most of the usual cafeteria stations are closed. He catches up to her again by the drinks, and they grab a table by the window in the small left-side dining room. All but three of other tables are empty. 

"So that was Finn," Bellamy says, just as Raven spears at a piece of lettuce with her fork. The crunch of greenery sounds out louder than expected, right over Finn’s name like an interruption or a censure, and as if in apology Raven finds herself tense and statue-still. She shoots her gaze up, testing out the moment before she answers.  

The comment was buoyed by a forced and unnatural lightness, but she can’t blame him for sounding awkward or for trying too hard. She knew this conversation was coming. But that doesn’t make the topic any less fraught. She's told him all about Finn, and about Clarke too, but that was months ago, and they haven't had a reason to talk about him since. 

“Yeah,” she answers. “That was Finn.” 

"Your ex who cheated on you?" 

"Yes." She pierces through a tomato too and takes a bite. "That's the one." 

Bellamy's hand tightens around the dark red plastic of his glass, and his jaw clenches. _What are **you** upset about?_ Raven wants to ask. _He didn't cheat on you._ But the wound, well-healed though it is, still hurts if pressed upon in just the right way, and she knows she won't be able to joke about it until it is nothing more than an old scar. If ever at all. 

"And you're not angry?" The words burst forth with a suddenness and a strength that seems to surprise even him. It's as if, Raven thinks, he'd been debating whether he should even say them, and as soon as he decided against, they formed of their own will and out they spilled. 

"I'm—" _angry, of course I'm angry, he fucked someone else, he fell in love with someone else—_ "I don't know. It's complicated."  

Bellamy rolls his eyes, jabs at his food with his fork. "That's a Facebook status," he mutters. Then, no longer under his breath, words clenched tight but he’s trying: "What's complicated about it?" 

Raven feels her own jaw tighten. But she'll give him the benefit of the doubt. She'll assume he really is trying to understand, and take his annoyance, directed at her but originating from Finn, all because of Finn, as some warped funhouse-mirror reflection of how sincerely he cares about her. Also, she does want to talk about it. She does. She wants to find the right words under the jumble of emotions and memories, even if it seems easier, blissfully easier, to let the whole unsavory mess lie. 

"Your sister," she says finally. "Is there anything that she could do that would make you stop loving her?" 

Bellamy's eyes narrow. "That's different. She's family." 

"Finn's like family. We've known each other since kindergarten. I spent holidays at his house. I drove up here with him and his mom for orientation freshman year and—before all that shit happened last year, he always treated me well." 

"Sleeping around is a pretty big exception to treating you well." 

"I know. And I am angry about that. I am." As she says the words, she understands them to be true. The anger isn't on the surface. It's buried deep down, a discarded refuse of feeling that has not yet degraded and that might, for all she can yet predict, remain there always within her, stubborn as plastic in a landfill. But it's not her only feeling. It is not even, anymore, the most important one. 

Maybe Bellamy sees the revelation on her face, because he watches her, quiet and patient, with an open curiosity he did not show before, his fork still in his hand but unmoving. 

"Obviously," she continues, slowly and carefully, avoiding misstep, "we'll never have the sort of relationship—friendship—we used to have." And if someone had told her as much a year ago, she would have been devastated at the impending loss, or perhaps just completely disbelieving. "But we might have _something_. When I think about him, I don't just think about the cheating. I think about everything, when we were kids, the good times..." She lets herself trail off, frowns down at the tabletop because what she is describing is the truth—but not the core of the truth.  

Bellamy doesn't press. His arm, resting on the table, moves slightly toward her, like he'd like to take her hand but he's not ready. Or he's not sure if she is. 

"I don't love him anymore," she says, at last. "And that doesn't mean the anger or the pain is gone but... I can imagine a time when he and I could be friends." 

Yes. That's it. That's what it comes down to, the thin point of truth into which she's sharpened her thoughts. She takes another bite of salad, crunching down on a cucumber slice to signal that she's done, she’s said everything she needs to say. 

"And that’s how he feels too?" Bellamy asks. 

"What do you mean?" She frowns, takes a drink and as soon as she's swallowed, adds, "If he thinks _he_ has any reason to forgive _me_ , I can go right back to being angry." 

"No, that's not what I meant. Is he interested in just being friends? Because it sounded to me like he was hoping to get back together." 

"Where did you get that idea?" It hadn't occurred to her at all: she'd read awkwardness in Finn's attitude, embarrassment and uncertainty too, and maybe if she's generous a real desire to reconnect, a heartfelt admission of missing her. But perhaps not even that. Perhaps just forced politeness and the stilted reading of an ex-boyfriend script. 

"From the way he looked at you," Bellamy answers. "How he made sure you knew he's not dating that other girl." 

"Clarke. And I brought her up first." 

"He dwelled on it, though. And he asked if you wanted to hang out again. And he completely ignored me, like he was trying to pretend I wasn't even there." 

"Probably because it's weird trying to apologize for past shitty behavior in front of someone you don't even know.” She shrugs, still unconvinced.  

Even if Bellamy is right and she's wrong, it doesn't matter. She doesn't love Finn and, no matter what he may think, he doesn't love her either. Not like that, not anymore, and maybe he never did. And she never loved him either, not liked she thought she did. Maybe the whole time they were together they were mistaking closeness and friendship and family feeling for passion and romance and lust. And if he has played the same trick on himself again, well, it will pass, just as all his impulses do. 

A glow of calm and accomplishment—conclusions drawn, problems solved—is expanding within her, but when she looks at Bellamy he is staring at her still, grim and wary. 

Not convinced, then. 

"Are you...actually worried about this?" _Worried that he'll make a move on me? Worried that I'll say yes? Worried that if I wanted to, I could…?_

"No," Bellamy answers, but the lie is so obvious that it seems to embarrass him. He ducks his gaze and focuses on his food. Raven watches him. She watches the grip of his fingers around his fork and she takes in the curl of his hair and then she remembers, last night, brushing her teeth in his bathroom and afterwards jumping right over him into bed, sliding herself into the thin space between his body and the wall and breathing her mint toothpaste breath against his mouth. 

And now, she thinks, he's sitting across from her wondering what a few moments of domesticity mean, what it means that he's run his fingertips down along her spine, what it means that she's pressed her feet against his feet and her hips against his hips and whispered _good night_ in his ear like what she really means is something like _I love being with you_ — 

"Okay, liar." She reaches across the table and pokes at his arm. " _Why_ does it bother you?" 

"It doesn't." He's got his shoulders hunched up to his ears like that will protect him, but she just keeps on staring, until eventually he relents, sits up straight again and then leans back in his seat, biting his lip. "Okay, it does. Seeing your ex-boyfriend acting friendly and trying to reconnect with you and whatever was annoying. I know it shouldn't be. It's not like you're going to go off and hook up with him—" He huffs out a breath, hard, through his nose, and Raven can see the tick forming at his jaw again. He won't look at her, and he can’t sit still.  

Once again her premonition pricks at her: _something is about to happen, something is happening._ But this time, beneath the bright splash of the cafeteria lights overhead and knowing their reflections are shining in the windows painted black after the setting of the sun, it manifests not as joyful anticipation but as something akin to nervousness, the jitters of an unfocused desire becoming real. 

He's embarrassed, she thinks, because he's admitted too much. She _could_ go off and hook up with Finn, if she wanted to; he has no claim to her fidelity, but since they ran into her ex he's been acting as if he did. 

"I mean,” he tries again, “I know you're not still into him." 

An awkward save. Raven nods and keeps watching and tries to give nothing away. 

"But as soon as he started talking to you... I don't know." He shifts in his chair again. This is the most uncomfortable Raven has ever seen him. "It was like some caveman part of my brain woke up and I just wanted to put my arm around you and say, _'This is my woman_.'" He drops his voice down comically low for the last words, and Raven hides her smile behind another forkful of greenery and veggies. He notices. He's been watching her too, gauging her, pretending he's not. When he sees she's not offended, he relaxes, slightly, and starts poking at his omelette again. "Luckily, my evolved human brain kept control." 

"Yeah, good thing." Nothing more boring than displays of dominance between men. She stretches her legs out under the table until the toes of her shoes hit up against his. "So—was that what the hand-holding thing was about?" 

Her voice is light and he shrugs, but it's an act, the last scrap of cover they'll allow themselves. "Yeah," Bellamy admits. "Partially. I wanted it to be clear, you know, what we are. But I also just wanted to do it." 

"That's funny," she answers. "Because I'm not sure I know, exactly." She takes a drink of water, sets her glass back down and twists it in a circle with her fingertips. "What we are." 

She expects him to give some sort of answer, she doesn’t know what but something in words, like _people who sleep together_ or _friends with benefits_. Maybe even _well you could be my girlfriend_ or an honest _I don't know_. As she waits, she watches the water in her glass slosh up against the sides, so she doesn't realize he's reaching for her other hand until his fingers are tentatively touching hers. When she looks up, he's not-quite-smiling at her, and his expression is soft. 

"What do you want to be?" 

_What does she **want**?_   

If he’s bold enough to ask then he must know, as surely as she knows, as surely as she’s known now for a while. The simplicity of the revelation makes her laugh, short, as she pulls her hand out from under his. "Way to pass the buck, Blake." He looks shocked for a moment, until she stands up, leaves the seat across from his and takes the chair next to him instead. Then he takes the cue, pushes his chair back and turns to her. She grabs its arms and uses them to pull herself forward, leans in until they are nose to nose and then closer, mouth to mouth.  

She takes a long pause, though, before she kisses him, because she wants to feel his anticipation in the rhythm of his breathing and also because she wants to enjoy this moment, which has been threatening to bloom within her all day, finally flowering. 

Bellamy's lips linger against hers, the kiss light and giddy between her smile and his. She rests her hands on his legs, then grabs for his waist, trying to close the last distance between them. He presses his palms to her cheeks, his fingers reaching up into her hair. 

When she pulls away, she murmurs, "How about you guess what I want?" 

He hums, pretends to think, kisses her again and suggests, "Some sort of monogamous dating arrangement?" 

"Mmhmm. Yeah. Something like that." 

"I'd like that too." 

After dinner, as they push open the heavy cafeteria doors and step out into the quiet cool of mid-March night, she reaches for his hand again. There is no one else around. The familiar world of the campus seems both close and cozy, and vast and empty, all at once: theirs, all theirs, if they want it. 

"I think you should know," Raven says, as they reach the bottom of the steps, "there's a chance that when Miller finds out we're official, he'll start talking about harvesting organs. And there _is_ an explanation for that.” 

"Organ harvesting?" Bellamy tries to sound skeptical, and shocked, but he's grinning. "Oh yeah, I bet there’s a _great_ explanation. You might as well tell me now because I _need_ to hear the story behind that." 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated. You can also find me on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/)!


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